The present invention relates to electronic control circuits for strobe tubes and, more particularly, to a solid state strobe tube control circuit which discharges a strobe tube according to a programmable flash pattern stored in memory.
Strobe tubes have been used in visual signalling devices in past applications. A limitation on their use, however, is that strobe tubes require a minimum time between flashes in order to avoid neoning and in order to store sufficient charge for the next discharge of the strobe tube. Prior strobe tube control circuits required relatively expensive timing circuits to control the time delay between discharges of a strobe tube and to provide various flash patterns. For instance, Sikora, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,949,017 and 4,956,584 discloses the combination of two analog oscillators for sequencing flash patterns. Accordingly, there is a need for an inexpensive solid state strobe tube control circuit having precision timing which enables the rapid discharging of a strobe tube according to various predetermined patterns.